Tuesday night’s stabbing death on the J train is reminiscent of the killing of Jordan Neely and the circumstances surrounding his tragic death. In order to truly support high-need New Yorkers like Neely, we must focus on his life — and the gaps in our systems that were unable to adequately address his needs.
Like many New Yorkers living with serious mental illness, Neely’s life was punctuated with periods of mental instability and frequent involvement with the criminal justice system. Just a few months before his death, Neely had been released from jail after spending 15 months in pretrial detention on Rikers Island, an experience that undoubtedly exacerbated his mental health struggles.
Upon his release, Neely was not simply cut loose into the city. Instead, a judge directed him to receive months of much-needed mental health support at an in-patient treatment center. After just two weeks though, Neely walked out the front door. Within months, he was dead.
“Jordan would have been alive if they made sure he stuck around to get the treatment he needed,” his uncle, Christopher Neely, was quoted as saying.
His uncle’s frustration reflects a refrain I heard constantly during my decades in the court system, first as a prosecutor and later as a judge. Rational and compassionate people who work in the criminal justice system have been frustrated as well. They know that our system is simply not equipped to deal with high-need people like Neely — the binary choice too often is unjust incarceration or insufficient support.
Throughout my career, I have seen numerous cases involving individuals struggling with behavioral health issues who have found themselves cycling in and out of the justice system. Put simply, we are in this place because for too long we have relied on law enforcement and incarceration as our primary response to those in mental distress.
Unquestionably, the court system’s response to those with mental health issues has dramatically improved over the past two decades. Problem-solving courts and alternatives to incarceration (ATI) have proliferated across the state, with the Brooklyn Mental Health Court and the Manhattan Felony ATI Court serving as prime examples of innovative programs that support those with behavioral health issues, including those who have been charged with serious, violent offenses. Unfortunately, these programs remain limited in scope and impact, lacking the full suite of tools and solutions critical to address the needs of both the affected individuals, as well as the impacted communities, in more severe cases.
In order to achieve fair and just outcomes in these cases, we need a comprehensive roadmap for how New York City can effectively support those with serious mental illness. We need to develop a task force — modeled after the Lippman Commission that issued a clarion call to close Rikers — that brings together a wide range of stakeholders, including experts in behavioral health, legal practitioners in the justice system, business, philanthropic, and community leaders, and those who have experienced serious mental illness and the criminal justice system.
Just as the Lippman Commission began its work with no preconceived outcomes in mind, this task force should be guided by research and engagement to create something new, comprehensive, and actionable. Task force members should be free to structure their inquiry around answering questions like: how do we prevent the seriously mentally ill from becoming engaged with the criminal justice system to begin with? What do we do once a person with serious mental illness comes into contact with the system? How do we ensure that someone who has been involved does not simply end up back in front of a judge after another mental health episode?
Importantly, this task force should be nonpartisan and independent from any single governing body. There should be no limit on the scope of its inquiry and any recommendations made by the body should be distanced from real or perceived special interests.
Fortunately, there is already forward momentum. The U.S. Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators commissioned a report which lays out a comprehensive set of recommendations that the state courts are in the process of implementing. But this mandate is not enough.
As I have learned during my four decades of public service, there is no such thing as a silver bullet or quick fix for complex issues. But if we truly want to care for and support members of our community struggling with severe mental illness, we need to do the hard work of finding a new answer. This new commission could be an excellent first step.
DiFiore was chief judge of New York State from 2016 to 2022.
